President C. Scott Green addressed issues of UI’s budget deficit, public-private partnerships and next academic year’s tuition freeze. Green has been addressing faculty and colleges as well with today’s was an update to UI’s staff.
Big-ticket items:
- Employee contract non-renewals
- UI has decided to go forward with employee contract non-renewals rather than renewing contracts of certain UI employees whose positions are not affordable anymore Green said.
- “These are our friends and our colleagues. My hope is that in better times everyone comes back, most of these folks love the university — and again they’ve done nothing wrong — other than these positions, need to be eliminated because we just don’t have the money to carry them,” Green said.
- Vacant Positions
- In some cases, vacant positions will be not be filled unless absolutely needed Green said.
- Public-private partnerships (P3)
- Green said they are looking into doing P3 agreements for some of UI’s assets. P3 agreements are UI using assets like the District Energy Plant, also called the steam plant, and putting them into legal contracts which would then allow them to be leased to companies outside of UI Green said.
- These companies then run the asset for a set amount of time before they are returned to UI.
- Planned budget reduction per executive office for the Fiscal Year 2021 (FY21)
- President’s reduction of 8%
- Provost reduction of 13%
- Note the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President includes colleges and departments.
- DFA reduction of 12%
- ITS reduction of 13%
- Research reduction of 12%
- Advancement reduction of 0%
- University Communications and Marketing reduction of 0%
- Tuition Freeze
- UI has agreed to not raise tuition, enacting a tuition freeze for the next academic year along with Boise State, Idaho State and Lewis-Clark State.
- Mandatory furloughs and university-wide cuts
- Green is considering mandatory furloughs and university wide-salary reductions as a last option. Mandatory furloughs would force employees to take unpaid time off and university wide-salary reductions which would lower the salary of all UI employees. Green understands that forcing employees to take a salary reduction, some faculty and staff would leave UI for a more competitive rate.
- “This is the least attractive, but it is one that I will consider if at the end of the day nothing else works,” Green said.
- Program prioritization
- Green said he is still waiting to hear back from the deans of each college before a decision is made.
Alex Brizee can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @alex_brizee
Kali Nelson contributed to this article